To the Editor:

It may be helpful in judging the difficult situation in India to set out a few points in which there need be no disagreement, since they rest on verifiable fact.

The sharpest repudiations of the New Order of Japan have come from India--see the reply of Tagore to Noguchi. For the past five years while we and England have been freely trading with Japan, India led by the All-India Congress has been boycotting Japanese goods in protest against the invasion of China. India has been less asleep than we.

Here again India is not asleep--and this is the point on which American opinion most commonly goes wrong. India has more than a million men under arms, mostly volunteers. Voluntary enlistment continues at the reported rate of fifty thousand a month. One-third of these soldiers are on fronts outside of India. As fighters they have given a good account of themselves. The bottleneck of Indian defense is not at the enlistment office, nor in the debates among parties: it is in the equipment. The picture of an India sleep-walking while her house burns is wholly false.

Though India has a war potential of perhaps ten million able fighting men, the inability of either Britain or America to equip them rapidly over a distance of twelve thousand ocean miles, and the undeveloped state of India's own machine-industry, have this consequence: Japan cannot be held on the Indian front by machines but only by a hostile population. If the common people like those of Russia and China are ready to scorch their own earth and carry on guerrilla warfare, Japan's forces can be neutralized and her conquests made fruitless, even if Calcutta falls.

Here I cease listing facts and state my belief. I believe America can do a great deal. First by remembering that the Indian people, like ourselves, will not be rendered cordial by bluster and blame, especially on the part of the uninformed. Morale will rise of itself in direct proportion to India's conviction of the good faith of those who make promises and propose constitutions. If America and Britain could join in pledging that the Atlantic Charter will be implemented for India, that would help. But our greatest help at the moment, while we are equipping and directing the armies of Indian volunteers, will be to attempt to understand the Indian situation. William Ernest Hocking.